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All this calls for examination; the enquiry must bring us
close to the solution as regards the gods.
We have traced self-disposal to will, will to reasoning and, next
step, to right reasoning; perhaps to right reasoning we must add
knowledge, for however sound opinion and act may be they do not
yield true freedom when the adoption of the right course is the
result of hazard or of some presentment from the fancy with no
knowledge of the foundations of that rightness.
Taking it that the presentment of fancy is not a matter of our
will and choice, how can we think those acting at its dictation
to be free agents? Fancy strictly, in our use, takes it rise from
conditions of the body; lack of food and drink sets up
presentments, and so does the meeting of these needs; similarly
with seminal abundance and other humours of the body. We refuse
to range under the principle of freedom those whose conduct is
directed by such fancy: the baser sort, therefore, mainly so
guided, cannot be credited with self-disposal or voluntary act.
Self-disposal, to us, belongs to those who, through the
activities of the Intellectual-Principle, live above the states
of the body. The spring of freedom is the activity of
Intellectual-Principle, the highest in our being; the proposals
emanating thence are freedom; such desires as are formed in the
exercise of the Intellectual act cannot be classed as
involuntary; the gods, therefore, that live in this state, living
by Intellectual-Principle and by desire conformed to it, possess
freedom.
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